2024 Report

Burn, Duncan Hollow, Burn! 2024: The Year of the Controlled Burn

We started the 2024 Fire Edition of the Massanutten Training Academy Run #3 promptly at 7:01 (😁) with the sun rising in the background of the revised starting location at 211 East, the commuter lot on Route 211 at the Massanutten South trailhead.

Earlier in the week leading up to the training run, Larry Huffman reported that the Forest Service had just announced that a control burn would be occurring that week in the middle of the Training Academy’s course. They planned to ignite on Wednesday, and wrap things up on the Saturday of the scheduled run. The area to be scorched was the Duncan Hollow, Gap Creek and Scothorn sections, east of Crisman Hollow Road and Kerns Mountain ridge. Those trails and that section of the road would be closed during the burn.

As a result, Barret Stanton was tasked with coming up with a new route for this year’s run that would keep the runners generally in the area that comprises the final third of the Massanutten Mountain Trails 100 course, but would navigate from the areas that might be closed. The revision had a start and finish at the 211 East lot, which generally is the second aid station during this training run. The new course would take the runners across Kerns and then down to Moreland Gap for their first aid stop, then a retracing of their steps to return to Kerns, with the rest of the training run occurring on the actual MMT course.

On this day, the VHTRC requirement that a picture of the gathered group of starters be taken was thwarted by a pesky thumb, unfortunately. After a short briefing by the run director, and a final reminder of the course changes, the runners were off. Because of the change of course, we put an order in for good weather and received it, thankfully. This was a welcome break from the now well-established 2024 winter weather pattern, as almost every weekend has featured the wettest and/or coldest weather of any particular week.

Christian and I met the runners about 3 miles in as they came through the old, long-abandoned Massanutten visitor’s center. At this point, everyone was looking strong and fast. Jose Gracias decided that even though we started 60 minutes later than usual, it was still too early for him, but despite his later start, he trotted through here not far behind everyone else.

Having climbed the orange-blazed Massanutten South trail, and then the white-blazed Wildflower trail, the runners crossed Route 211 and went up Crisman Hollow Road, heading on over to run across Kerns for the first of two transversals on this revised day. After heading down Ed’s Trail at the end of Kerns, they visited volunteers Brian Carr, Vickie Bryant, and Heather Phelps at aid station one, Moreland Gap. Here they were treated to some bacon, sandwich wraps and fruit.

After Moreland came the second passing over Kerns, which seemed to be the major fuss of the day amongst this tender group of trail runners. Can I reiterate that Barret says runners will appreciate this come run day? We will see, I guess.

The next stop was visiting Larry and Tracey Thibodeau, and Zac Seidel at aid station 2 back at the Visitor’s Center, where they served up perogies, tater tots and ice pops. At this point, several folks decided to call it a day, or go on to do bonus miles. Eric Garmon was the Big Winner here, as he logged in 10 extra miles. Eric truly maximized his opportunity to get in solid rocky, mountain training on this day!

Ten runners completed all 3 tasks that we challenged them with at the start (wear green for this St. Patrick’s Eve occasion;, summit Jawbone at the end of the Kerns Mt section; and figure out whose birthday it was). Extra kudos to Charlene Howard, who didn’t climb all the way up Jawbone but did pee on said trail. Also extra kudos to John Miskimmin, who did not wear green but is actually from Ireland, I felt compelled to give him some kind of credit! For these runners, they get a hearty congratulations!

Oh, whose birthday was it? Barry Hauptman, sorry to throw everyone off by saying they were 37. We also found out it was Arun’s birthday!

Coming into the finish first was Jicheng Liu with a time of 6:17, followed closely in second by the speedy Nora Jodrey with a 6:21; 3rd to finish this fun day of training in the Massanuttens was Nicolas Ingvoldstad. But by the end of the day, everyone had gotten in their desired amount of training, and clearly had a wonderful time (even on Kerns II).

The end was your typical VHTRC Party-In-The-Parking-Lot, with Dan Aghdam on burger duty and Chelsea Smith deep frying french fries (yes, I did say this). We had refreshing beverages in addition to this great food, playful dogs, fun kids and the cutest baby ever at the end.

We want to thank everyone that came out to make this such a fun and successful day including the volunteers, runners, and people that just stopped by to visit. We would also like to thank the behind-the-scenes people that helped out during the week leading up to the run, particularly in regards to revamping the course and coordinating with the Forest Service: Larry Huffman, Barret Stanton, and Quatro.

Here is a link to a Flickr page with photos by Zach Weinberger, taken at the entrance to the Wildflower Trail at the Visitor’s Center aid station.

Photos

Other reports

• Kerns Revenge, by Jonn Calabrese

Results

Start Time was 7:01; Times Listed Below Are Time of Day

Aid Station 1: Moreland Gap, 10.5 Miles
Aid Station 2: Visitor’s Center, 19 Miles
Finish: 211 East, 29.8 Miles

And here is our usual admonition regarding the “results” below… Bear in mind: this is not a race. No one treated this as a race. These should not be considered “race results.” The times are provided for informational purposes only. This can help others who pull the route from the event site and run the course self-supported, so that those runners can approximate times. It can assist those considering this training run in future years to estimate their own run times. And it is helpful for volunteers to see the range of times that runners take to cover certain sections.